On Saturday, September 18, 1902, at 10.30 a.m. (Irish time), a stone coming from the sky struck the earth (let. 54° 88' 20" N., long. 6° 12' 10" W. of Greenwich) at a farm, belonging to Mr. Andrew Walker, situated in the district termed Crossbill, a mile to the north of the village of Crumlin, in which there is a station of the same name on the line of railway between Lisburn and Antrim. The place of fall is 3½ miles east of Lough Neagh, the largest lake in the British Isles, and I2 miles almost due west of Belfast, in which city nearly two thousand members of the British Association were then assembled for the annual meeting (September 10-17).

During the year 1919 specimens of some of the meteorites preserved in the Public Museum of King Willlam's Town, South Africa, were kindly placed by the Curator, the late Yr. F. A. O. Pyre, at the disposal of the writer for investigation. One of these specimens was a meteoric iron labelled Mount Ayliff, another a mass of oxidized material labelled Western Cape Province, and a third a small piece of iron labelled ‘found on Elandsburg at an altitude of 6,000 ft. in 1888’ Unfortunately Mr. Pyre was not in a position to supply very much more information about the specimens.

The following study was carried out in the Mineralogical Laboratory of the University of Cambridge upon specimens which were brought by myself from Japan. My hearty thanks are offered to Professor W. J. Lewis and Dr. A. Hutchinson for their kind permission to use the laboratory and the instruments, and for their constant help throughout my work.